Wednesday, 27 July 2016

If you had told me 3 years ago that I would be moving to a
small town with where cows regularly impeded my driving, and my new worst enemy
are deer, I would have questioned your sanity.

And yet here we are.

Similarly, telling me that I would pay good money to go see
the Dixie Chicks in concert would have resulted in derisive laughter and
tasteless jokes about country music….

You can see where this is going.

By some perverse stroke of fate, earlier this month I ended
up back in Vancouver and kind of drunk, attending my very first country music
concert. I was talked into this by
a group of country-loving friends, and basically went along because I like
them, and because it seemed like a reasonable excuse for a get-away. The
concert was merely something I had to endure to participate in the rest of the
weekend.

Some of the gang

The whole thing ran pretty smoothly. Convoy to the coast,
find the hotel, shopping, food, not being able to park the gigantic (and
delightfully roomy!) truck in ANY FUCKING PARKADE IN VANCOUVER…..I mean,
seriously, this truck didn’t fit anywhere. And while I realize Vancouver likes
its tiny luxury sports cars, they should appreciate that us county folk come
down from the hills from time to time, and we need a place to put our vehicle
too. We didn’t even bring the pigs and goats this time!

Anyway, I digress. Eventually we parked.

In any case, by the time we finally got to Vancouver, I felt
that my ride down had rendered the concert completely unnecessary, as the radio
had played almost nothing but country music the entire trip. I tried to explain that
to me, most country music fell into only a few categories: my girlfriend left me, my dog ran away/died, I have syphilis because my
girlfriend is a tramp, and/or my
guitar string broke so I had to improvise with this broom and a set of spoons.

The girls I was with thought this was hysterical, and turned up the radio, and for some reason were
continually surprised that I didn’t know any of the songs. Like Earl. Why didn’t I know Earl? I mean, who doesn’t know Earl?

Me. I didn’t know Earl. Except now I do.

After going out for dinner and getting happily toasted, we
made it to the venue, found our seats, and I started live tweeting the event.
This alone was a novelty, as I’ve never done this before.

The Dixie Chicks probablysinging Goodbye Earl

The concert opened, and I recognized the expected zero songs
for the first half hour. My friends would glance over in my direction with a
happy expectancy at the start of each new song, confidently believing that I
would at least know THIS one, because EVERYONE knows THIS one.

Except me.

I think by the end of the 2 hour set, I’d recognized at
least the chorus of something like 5 songs. I dutifully belted out the few
words that I knew, and found myself having a good time.

My favourite part of the night, however, came from watching
our seat section guard/escort guy. He had a perpetual case of resting bitch
face, and glared uncompromisingly at everyone who came past him. He was
particularly unimpressed by the shit-faced girls that hobbled by him
on the way up to their seats. At least one of them couldn’t walk on her own, and I
could just feel the reality show coming.

For the better part of 15 minutes, I watched his
disagreeable face glare at them. Eventually he gathered more of his bitch-faced
cronies and they all stared at the offending girls as a group. For the final
act, they called in the police and, as a unit, they approached the girls and
asked them to leave.

The girls were mind-blowingly drunk and high as shit, and
the ensuing confrontation was like watching a live version of a Real Housewives
slap fight. Pure entertainment gold.

During this time I tried to act as sober as possible.

All in all, and despite not being a “country music” fan, I
will say that the Dixie Chicks are incredibly talented, and I enjoyed myself
much more than I expected. It helped that I had some great and very enthusiastic
company to help teach me their ways. I’ll even admit to liking a few of their
songs.

And finally, I'm confident that going forward I will even be able to
recognize Earl, should it come on. At least I should hope so, after hearing
it something like 77 times throughout the weekend.

Saturday, 16 July 2016

Once or twice a year our daycare shuts down, leaving me
scrambling for a place to store my kids while I go make money to pay for
daycare.For the last two years,
this has meant a week-long vacation for the kids with their grandparents, and
equally a week-long stay-cation for Husband and I at home without the kids.

This small window of having no children in the house allows
me the precious joy of getting myself ready for work without simultaneously
questioning how long it can possibly take a 6 year old to find socks, or how a
3 year old is able to disassemble an entire pantry in under 4 minutes.

This week also gives Husband and I a rare opportunity to
take an evening and go rock climbing.

Last year, we made it up twice despite the rain, thunder and
lightening, and most of all, the rattlesnake.

It’s safe to say that I may have been just a little bit
apprehensive about reliving that encounter. And so I did what I should never be
allowed to do, and I looked up information about rattlesnake bites.

Do not do this. Never do this.

Snake bites are terrible things. Looking at pictures of
snake bites is a terrible idea. Reading about what can happen when a snake bites
you is a terrible idea. Me doing both of these things before heading out into
snakeland was the worst fucking idea.

And so I got a big stick.

I figured that if I took a walking stick with me, I could
sweep it around in front of me if there was tall grass, and bang it on rocks
before stepping on them to scare away anything that may otherwise be inclined
to lash out from it’s hiding place and impale me with it’s hate fangs.

My stick plan worked. I banged along as I walked and felt
better as the day went on. No danger noodles dared show themselves while I had
my stick.

I even found having a solid walking stick was helpful in balancing as
we navigated the small boulders that littered the pathways as we got closer to our
climbs.

About 30 minutes into our trek we met someone clambering down the path towards us.
The man watched me approaching for a moment as I made my way slowly up the path. As he passed Husband, he nodded hi and asked him if I was blind.

Me and my stick

Blind? I’m climbing over waist high boulders, do I look fucking
blind?

Yes.

Me and my anti-snake stick, along with banging every rock
before I stepped on it, created what was evidently a very good imitation of
someone who couldn’t see shit.

And while I know that I no longer have 20/20 vision, I can
assure you if I was ever going to be blind, the last place in the fucking world
I would be is somewhere that would require a snake stick in the first place.

Monday, 11 July 2016

Back in my university days, I took a number of archaeology
and anthropology classes. The professors teaching them tended to have a lot of…um…
character.

One prof I had was basically the Jane Goodall of orangutans.
She’s worked with them for years, advocated for their protection, and was very
good at making what should have been an otherwise interesting subject somewhat
dry.She also held all of her
classes at 9 pm just to keep herself on Borneo time. I got very sleepy.

Another one had stories of fantastic South American dig
sites. His adventures sounded exciting and beautiful. And then he ruined it with
follow up stories about a Bot fly laying eggs in his skin and of snakes that fall
out of trees and bite you for the sheer enjoyment of it. Snakes are assholes.

And then there was the professor who liked maize.All he talked about in class was maize.
How it was grown, how it was harvested, how it was cooked, and how it wasn’t
the same as corn….but for all intents and purposes, that shit looks pretty much
like fucking corn.

And he used
terrible words.

Over the course
of a couple of lectures he used, in various contexts, words like classificatory
and genetical.

Now from what I can see (thanks Google) classificatory is sort of a word depending on who you ask, but it’s
more likely a terrible bastardization of the word classification. Why the shit anyone would choose to use
it is absolutely beyond me.

But he did. In fact, it was even the answer to a test
question.

My friend (and this still makes me laugh) wrote beside her
answer that this wasn’t, in fact, a word. When she got her test back, he had
marked her answer correct, but added to her comment that it was a word, and
more specifically that it was an adverb.

No sir, it is not.

If you choose to use classificatory, and you should not, it
would be an adjective, not an adverb. If you wanted to turn this shitty word
into an adverb, you would need to say classificatorily.
This is even worse. If you ever hear someone use it, you may want to reconsider
knowing them.

Which brings me to genetical.
This is not a word. Even Google
agrees that this is not a word. Using this in a sentence is a terrible idea, and
you should feel bad for doing so.

But he did. Again and again. And it was painful. We could have made it into a drinking game.....And the genetical predisposition for brow ridges can be seen here....bottoms up!

More recently, I encountered the "word" dramatical. It was used in a place where I knew it
shouldn’t be, but I had no power to change it, and so I didn't even have a chance to make proper fun of it. At least my friend was able to
vent her frustration at the sloppy, half-baked classificatory, but in this case I couldn’t say anything.

To be fair, Urban Dictionary provides a definition for this word, making it technically an actual word, though if we accept this, we also need to accept bae as a word, which I'm not willing to do.

According to Urban Dictionary, dramatical means to
be so dramatic that one even seems to be theatrical*.

The example they give
for this depressing bastardization of the English language is as follows: "Flavor
Flav ousted the DRAMATICAL girls".

Oh sweet Lord. I think it’s reasonably safe to say that if your definition for a word
contains any reference to Flavor Flav, you should seriously reconsider your
life choices before using it in any grown-up setting. Or you should be buying stock in necklace clocks. Basically, friends don't let friends use dramatical.

And with that I'll remove my grammar nazi hat for the day. It's been fun. ;-)

Sunday, 3 July 2016

Today we added Sally to the collection of ticks in the fridge. Our 6 year old bravely tolerated the removal of her very first female dog tick, and was granted the naming rights. This is the first tick that we've actually had attach to anyone. I let Husband handle the extradition.

Sally was added to the jar containing the desiccated remains of her male comrades, where she will live out the rest of her parasitic life. God speed Sally.